Wagons litter the St. Patrick’s Day parade area like spent beer cans and broken Irish trinkets.

On the route, there’s the world’s most famous beer wagon, a few covered wagons and plenty of kiddie wagons full of green-clad tots.

Along the route are the vendor wagons and the cooler wagons.

Near the route sit paddywagons and fire wagons.

Trumping them all Saturday morning, both in terms of numbers and notoriety, will be the pottywagons.

Nature’s call is one no parade attendee can ignore. With about one toilet per 1,000 watchers (428 port-o-lets for a crowd projected to be in the 400,000 range), the savvy celebrant rents his own latrine.

And per city decree, said celebrant must stick his urination station in the back of a truck or in a trailer and park it legally in a marked space no earlier than parade morning.

“You want your people to be there and have a fun time and not miss half the parade to go the bathroom,” said Jason Hagan, a proud potty renter. “And you need a decent place to go. Sometimes you get into those public restrooms and it's not the cleanest.”

Potty training

Private potties have long been a St. Patrick’s must, as much a part of the diehard’s parade provisions as a crockpot of green grits, a cooler full of extra ice and a bag of rain gear.

Until last year, though, hitting the family head was far from performance art. The johns were tucked into alleys and lanes or amongst the shrubbery on the squares, accessible but relatively out of sight.

Downtown residents finally raised a stink about the privy proliferation, and the city reacted by flushing all toilets from public property.

Officials left a loophole as big as a toilet seat, though. Port-o-lets could still be placed on private property. Private potty proponents floated the notion of putting their outhouses on public display in truck beds and trailers near the route and dared the city to oppose them.

City officials called that bluff in what was deemed the “Facebook compromise” because it was announced via social media. Pottywagons would be allowed so long as they were legally parked and not left on the streets overnight.

Several potty proponents weren’t bluffing, though, and they placed their toilet trolleys as close to the route as possible. Half a dozen of them lined State Street on parade morning like oversized dominoes.

“Is it pretty? No,” city spokesman Bret Bell said. “But we can deal with it for a few hours one day a year.”

Can cram

Rental business went in the toilet last year with the potty policy change.

Demand is back for 2013, though.

Representatives for several area port-o-let companies reported they have rented “dozens” of toilets for Saturday’s events. Evidently, party-goers prefer embarrassment to bladder discomfort.

As one pottywagon visitor said last St. Patrick’s Day, “You kind of feel like you're on stage with everyone watching when you come in and out of them, but you gotta do what you gotta do."

Local portable toilet operators would like to see other options explored in the future. The city’s current port-o-let rental contract, with a company out of Jacksonville, expires this year. The local rental companies would prefer the city designate areas along the route for them to set up their facilities and allow the companies to charge a use fee.

The result would be more toilets at no taxpayer costs.

“Some will say the city should provide the toilets for the event at no cost to the public, but if they’re going to let groups charge for wristbands required to drink on public streets, what’s the difference?” said Lee Insley with A-OK Portables in Richmond Hill. “In doing so, you lower or eliminate the costs to the city, and thereby the public.”

In the meantime, Savannah’s stuck with the pottywagons.

Adam Van Brimmer’s column appears each Monday and he’ll be working the parade this week. Anybody willing to share their private potty combination can email him at adam.vanbrimmer@savannahnow.com or 912-652-0362.

ST. PATRICK’S DAY GUIDE

Go to savannahnow.com/stpatricksday for your complete guide to St. Patrick’s Day in Savannah where you can download the SavannahNow St. Patrick’s Day app for iOS and Android devices, find out where to park and how to get down to the parade, related news stories, photos and more.

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